Assignment: Ukiah - My Super Bowl party of one

I got approximately the same number of invitations to Super Bowl parties this year as I do most years: Zero. At least it makes it easy to decide whether or not to go.

Maybe this is because I don't much care for football, I tell myself, although probably 60 percent of the people standing around living rooms on Super Bowl Sunday don't like football, or at least not enough to know the names of the teams playing.

Also, my team is never in the Super Bowl. Funny, huh? The Cleveland Browns have been a professional football team since the 1940s and they're charter members of the NFL. But they've never been to a Super Bowl, not even to lose. If you spot a Browns player wearing a Super Bowl championship ring he stole it.

Not being involved in championships is familiar territory for Cleveland fans, of course. The last time the Indians won the World Series was 1948. The 2009 NBA season was a high point for the Cleveland Cavaliers because they didn't finish in last place. On the other hand, Cleveland's National Hockey League team has never lost a game. I'll leave it to you to figure out why.

So I'll be rattling around the house alone when the Big Game kicks off today. When I say I'll be "alone" I do take into account the statistical margin of error involved in such predictions, which is plus- or minus-three.

This means it is mathematically possible that I'll have one or two other imaginary people with me to mime celebrating the game. Hope at least one of my pretend friends remembers to bring beer.

The other thing I can do is head down to the Sports Attic for the game. Plenty of people will be there to welcome me, I'm sure.

Ye Shall Know us by Our Works

Let us now pause briefly to bid a fond farewell to one of the great leaders of our time and in this place.

We owe a collective debt to a former county supervisor who inspired so many of us to do so much. First, bear in mind that some of what she inspired us to do was legal. More than half, even. Possibly.

Kendall Smith, We Hardly Knew Ye, although the county Grand Jury got to know ye fairly well. And Dave Eyster over at the DA's office had an intimate working relationship with ye, or at least with your attorney.

Kendall Smith got elected to the county Board of Supervisors years ago by promising unsuspecting voters that she had vast experience in high levels of government and that this experience would translate into bountiful economic benefits for all of us in Mendocino County. Having worked for Mike Thompson (D-Thompson) the reasoning went, Kendall would know which strings to pull and what buttons to push in order to get things done for local constituents.

Elect her we did, and then we sat back and waited for the funding to arrive and the benefits to accrue. Boy did we wait. But the years passed by and the strings went unpulled and the buttons gathered many layers of dust upon them.

Some assumed this was because Kendall had a strict sense of propriety, and thus could not bring herself to use her insider knowledge to bring favored status to Mendocino County. Were her ethical standards simply too high? Ha.

The reality was that Kendall Smith was merely inept, selfish, stupid and dishonest. She knew nothing about power except how to use it to her own benefit.

Kendall Smith was a chiseler and a cheat and a liar. When she was caught bilking the taxpayers for expense money she'd never spent, she refused to come clean and she refused to pay the money back. Her arrogance was breathtaking.

To this day she remains a model of political corruption. Some of the seamier legislative bodies in places like Somalia and Venezuela and Chicago still learn from the teachings of Kendall Smith: (A) Take want you want, (B) Lie and Deny (C) Stall a bunch (D) Use your political position to thwart the wheels of justice (E) Lie some more (F) Cave when prosecution is imminent and (G) Pay back when there's no other option.

What a bum. What a selfish greedy bag of meat she was and probably still is. Why wouldn't she be? Retired (with a hefty citizen-funded pension) and living back in Fort Bragg, do you think Smith understands the basics of honest citizenship? When she lunches at Cap'n Flint's does she sneak out without paying? When she borrows a rake from a neighbor does she keep it?

As a model of trust she ranks lower than the average criminal incarcerated on Low Gap Road. She routinely skirted the law and defied her ethical obligations. She took what she could, and when caught she pretended to be the victim.

A shifty, shady politician walks among us. Who could have imagined?

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Tom Hine realizes his fond farewell to Kendall Smith is long overdue but he and TWK are always happy to help supply a public servant with yet another newspaper clipping to put in their scrapbook.